


Imkêb Id-Sûd (Reading the Portents)

by lferion



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Challenge Response, Dwarves, Gen, Khazâd November, Omens & Portents, Other People's Pictures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 04:10:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9417923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lferion/pseuds/lferion
Summary: Óin and Portents





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks go to Zana & Morgynleri for encouragement & sanity-checking. 
> 
> Originally posted [here](http://lferion.tumblr.com/post/152889596130/kh%C3%A2zad-november-oin%20) on tumblr for Day 7 of Khazâd November.

* * *

To say that Óin was hard of hearing was to absurdly understate the case, as he himself would be the first to point out. Óin’s ears were in sad shape (not helped, thank you, by Certain Persons taking liberties with his ear-horn) but there was nothing at all wrong with his perceptions otherwise. Some, indeed sharpened as the years passed. Stone-sense, dark-sight, day sight, taste and smell and touch all in working order. But the perception that had strengthened the most over time was the peculiar thing his brother called ‘reading the portents’ though it had little to do with reading, or seeing really. It was a kind of knowing, recognizing a thing as significant, speaking, carrying more meaning than ordinary. The flight of most birds held little import beyond themselves. The scatter of most stones or dice or tally sticks was random, if occasionally decorative or unlikely. Most chance meetings were just chance. But sometimes those ordinary things were more than ordinary, random, chance. Sometimes the birds presaged a storm, the stones a birth, the chance occurrence a thing that could change the world. 

Óin chanced to see Thorin return from Bree, sun-struck raindrops in his hair, and _knew_ without word or look that something had changed, a journey was afoot, and he would have a part in it, to whatever end.


End file.
